According to Sophy Ridge on Sky this morning, a coup is currently being staged in Downing Street.
No. 1o is claiming that Wes Streeting is trying to topple Keir Starmer, though the truth of that claim is unclear.
The Cabinet, however, is undoubtedly engaged in a civil war.
And No. 10 is very obviously briefing against the Labour Party, whose deputy leader, Lucy Powell, is freelancing on the back benches, with a mandate to do so.
Any idea that there is a government in operation is, as is apparent in reality, far-fetched at best.
And no one knows where this is heading as yet.
Watch this space. We are seeing the consequences of political ineptitude fuelled by an absence of dogma, matched only by a manic desire for power in the interest of everyone Labour should not be serving, run its course, without it being in any way obvious that the alternative might be better.
This is what the endgame of neoliberal politics might look like.
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I am working my way through Paul Holden’s meticulously researched book “The Fraud” and it is clear that this so-called Labour government (and the whole Labour Together project) is based on deceit and is so out of step with its membership and voters that its demise may only be a question of when not if. However what follows is far from clear. I see no one in the current government that gives me any hope that the Labour Party is capable of rebuilding our economy and society in a more just and equitable way.
Agreed
I will have to look at what Paul Holden says, but it sounds like he is comparing McSweeney to Stalin. McSweeney point of view is that winning the hearts of the membership is completely irrelevant to gaining power. What is important is take over of the party bureaucracy. That is where the power lies. It may well be “democracy” but it doesn’t feel like it is what democracy should be. They have left their allies feel alienated. It is the type of politics that doesn’t have a long life within Democracies. Either democracy stands and this project fails or this project wins and democracy fails.
Ash Sarkah did an excellent interview of Paul Holden on Sunday’s Novara Media Downstream. See https://youtu.be/F-0lefCBeNE?si=-CkGA6Wr9hJ5dhv_
Good points illustrating the tension between a membership that could/should/want’s to influence policy and a party bureaucracy and its organisers/controllers that despise not just the members but also many/most elected MPs. LINO is a good example how things can go off-track when a smallish clique decide on “stuff” with a “leader” selected by the clique because he ain’t (a leader).
Arguably the Greens swing the other way – with an organisation that makes even reaching agreement on policy formation very difficult. The Tories of course have/had(?) a membership that is at best reactionary & out of touch, at worst insane, but the party will soon be taken over by Deform (Netherlands Atiilies Inc) a private company. Is this the end game, companies replacing political parties and “popular” support is driven by talking heads on telly and social meeja? Thought replaced by emotion, policy formation by personal interest?
& is this the only forum discussing this? (in sensible and measured terms as opposed to frothing at the mouth stuff).
Starmer was always about power rather than policy.
He was a policy vacuum, chosen only for his deceit-based “electability”.
The only goal was the destruction of the left.
Governing?
Running the country?
Making the world a better place?
No, Morgan never mentioned anything about that. Must dash, got a plane to catch, Donald is calling.
@RobertJ
He was a policy vacuum, chosen only for his deceit-based “electability”.
Couldn’t agree more. Time to revive what I used to post about him before his full awfulness, incompetence and lack of substance became clear.
I dubbed him the non-strategic unpolitician, blundering his way to his Non-Socialist Nirvana in the Land of BoD.
Add in his authoritarian inflexibility, his likely status as a Secret Services and Zionist plant, his lack of the common touch (making “frosty, unapproachable” Ted Heath look like the Lord of Misrule”), and one can only grieve that it has come to this – that we’re being ruled by “the man upon, the stair”, in the old well-known ditty, who just was not there.
Was Starmer chosen only for his “deceit – based electability”? Or was he chosen as the intelligence agencies, including the CIA, pawn? He’s certainly doing a grand job of removing our civil liberties.
The coup has already happened which is why we are where we are today.
I would argue that a handover of power (forced or otherwise) is not a coup.
It seems inevitable that there will be a change of leader. Starmer has no obvious principles, let alone policies. The little he does is out of line with both the parliamentary party and the, diminishing, wider membership. Labour MPs know they are toast unless he goes. I’ll give the benefit of the doubt that most Labour MPs are fundamentally progressive and broadly left wing, even if they are spineless. They would, I think, like to improve society. And that is clearly not going to happen under Starmer and Reeves.
On the other hand there is not going to be a general election any time soon; turkeys don’t vote for Christmas. Unless, I suppose, Starmer decides to take the party down with him and tries to call a general election; that would likely cause a constitutional crisis.
The only question in my mind is how his ejection is going to happen and who will replace him. The field of viable candidates is narrow. Andy Burnham has no obvious way back into the PLP and his return would be seen as wielding the knife – not a good position to occupy. As for when, I suspect Starmer may, just, weather the budget. But if, as expected, Labour is wiped out in the May elections then his position will become untenable. Defenestrating a leader is bad, but if it were done ’twere well it were done quickly. Best well before an election to give time for the party to recover. Frankly I doubt the party can recover, but we shall see.
You are too kind to Labour MPs.
Those selected by the LINO party bureacracy and imposed on local CLPs for July 2024, did not need to have principles, consciences or any progressive vision, as long as they knew which side their LINO bread was buttered on, and who paid for the butter, especially who would be providing their butter post 2029.
LINO only needed to win one election after destroying the left, then it was (is) mission-accomplished, and their reward awaited them in a boardroom or thinktank somewhere.
If you haven’t read Paul Holden’s book “Fraud” yet, beg, borrow or buy a copy. It analyses the fraud that is Starmer in “forensic” detail.
https://www.orbooks.com/catalog/the-fraud/
This is the Wes Streeting who is so clueless about the NHS that he thinks getting rid of thousands of relatively cheap and often highly experienced administrators will improve waiting lists! It might be popular with those who think the NHS is too heavy with pension pushers, but reality is without these staff even more admin burden falls onto already overloaded clinical staff.
Starmer needs to go. The Labour party needs to go and we need PR and a government that represents the views of the public, not an opaque 2 party system with endless infighting and factionalism.
But maybe if Labour totally implodes we will get a multi party coalition before the next election?
Let’s see….
If McSweeny/Blair/Mandy is still pulling the strings with Starmer gone will this matter?
Thank you, Edward.
McSweeney and Streeting are allies and protégés of Blair and Mandelson going back two decades, as long as (the older) Starmer has been, and considered the long term water carriers for Blair. The back up to Streeting is Darren Jones.
This morning’s commentary by Owen Jones is accurate, I reckon.
Just before he teamed up with JP Morgan colleagues in Argentina last month, another scandal, Blair distanced himself from his stop gap water carrier, Starmer, by calling for tax cuts and a scaling back of net zero commitments. That felt like the starting gun to unseat Starmer.
Owen Jones is being sued by a BBC editor by the way…
Politics is so weird these days. If those outside the cabinet fear for their seats – their jobs, income and benefits, then I suppose we hope that there might be a change in the Neo-lib redoubt that is No.10. That is how politics is supposed to work – I’ll look after meself by looking after you – you will consent to me ruling you if you think me fair and competent.
The problem is that the same mindset works within no.10/no.11, but is inverted (hat tip to our host). Stymied & Reeves-cividist are looking after those who are looking after them – the rich. So the rich invert the relationship between voter and politician by sheer weight of money and control of the media and get exclusivity in terms of what they think is fair and competent. Sod the hoi polloi.
This my dears is how markets work. Money talks and allocates to money. I’ll give you an example from the reality of life.
My public sector org signs a £6 million contract with a supplier of building supplies. Senior management crows about it and thinks it has ‘arrived’ and it one of the big boys. Except that over time, we find that the supply chain is not as reliable as first thought. Why? Because that same supply provider has clients with £60 million/£120 million contracts. Who do you think comes first if the supply of toilet seats falters? Who’s your Daddy? Well, it won’t be the £6 million contract for sure. They might only be 8% of the suppliers turnover. ‘See what I mean?
The same thing happens I wager in all markets – including the more recent market in political favours from political parties. This is why we don’t need market thinking everywhere and why political funding should be nationalized. Markets are not always the best allocator of resources. Adam Smith’s ‘hidden hand’ was I think a polite way of calling out self-interested corruption that arises in markets which the Neo-liberals ignore, and people like Anthony Giddens underestimated. They say rational self interest stops greed; it does not, rational self interest is the engine of greed. The abuse of language here would make even Thomas Hobbes gag.
He’s a goner. Hopefully LINO will argue amongst themselves until 7 May then jettison him on the 8 May.
It’s laughable that Streeting is being considered LINO’s saviour. He’ll hand over the NHS to American healthcare companies in a heartbeat, no doubt making himself a very wealthy man in the process.
How does that make things better for the hard-pressed UK public?
On current polling, they’ll have to sprint to beat the Tories to a post-election day defenestration. I postulate that the Tories would have moved already, but the prospective leadership hopefuls want Badenoch to carry the can for next May’s shoeings.
There is a very good interview with Paul Holden and Ash Sarkar on Novara Media. The the present Home Secretary is being lined up for the new leadership to replace Starmer. Also interesting is the secret funding of Labour Together and Mcsweeny’s refusal to disclose this to the Electoral Commission which is required but law!
You’ve got to hand it to Starmer et al, it’s taken them only a year to completely destroy their party. That’s some achievement.
You only need to look at today’s evidence to see that wheeling in Streeting just means more of the same. His plan to axe thousands of NHS managers and administrators to “free up money for frontline care” looks likely to backfire badly. The headline savings look good on paper, but the reality is a £1 billion redundancy bill now for uncertain gains years down the line. In the meantime, many skilled staff will lose their jobs just as unemployment is rising, draining local economies and pushing up welfare costs.
More dangerously, the NHS risks cutting into its own muscle. The people being shed are the planners, data analysts, and contract managers who keep hospitals functioning efficiently. Lose too many of them, and the system slows, waiting lists grow, and the promised productivity boost turns into the opposite.
There’s also no clear funding pot for exit costs, no published impact assessment, and little sign of a plan to redeploy or retrain those affected. In short, this looks less like strategic reform and more like a hurried cost-cutting exercise designed for headlines rather than long-term value. It may deliver a brief fiscal saving, but at the expense of service resilience, economic stability, and ultimately, patient care.
Does anyone believe Streeting would be any better? His politics seem to be just as managerial as Starmer’s.
Most of them don’t want something “better” than Starmer, they want someone they think voters will vote for but with the same policy direction. At most someone who will throw some crumbs to the plebs and be less unpopular as a result.
This is a terrible, yet sadly predictable state of affairs. Starmer and Reeves are clueless. This maybe exactly why those pulling the strings put them there. Or at very least insist they must stay.
The left was largely “removed” from the PLP after 2017 and with it many voices opposing the Neolib consensus. Clive Lewis being one exception – although seemingly with few allies in the PLP.
Wes Streeting – Blairite to the core. Nothing new there.
A change of leader without a radical change of direction is pointless, Just the uniparty with a new “face”,
So depressing,
Actually mainly during the Blair years, what was left after that was a rump of lefty pensioner MP’s and few younger ones who sounded a bit leftish but firmly neoliberal.
Since 2017 many of those two groups are now gone too
Government spokespeople are desperately trying to urge us all to focus on their “achievements” rather than the leadership circus. So let’s have a look at how they are caring for those in need.
On the positive side, more people (especially those on UC without severe health conditions) will benefit from higher allowances and from enhanced employment/skills support.
On the negative side, people with health conditions or disabilities (especially new claimants) face reduced payments or tougher assessments, meaning the safety net is being narrowed for some of the most vulnerable.
The overall welfare spending is forecast to rise (given underlying pressures) but the reforms aim to reduce the rate of growth, and save several billion pounds by 2029-30, so the improvements are partly paid for by cuts elsewhere.
If the employment/skills support programmes succeed – i.e., people move into sustainable work – the reforms may deliver long-term benefits. But the scale of required change is large, and labour market/health barriers remain significant.
The cuts to benefits are concentrated on groups that are already disadvantaged (disabled, long-term ill). There is a real risk that these changes increase hardship unless offset sufficiently by the new supports.
Regional inequalities may widen: analyses suggest that areas with higher disability-claimant rates could be disproportionately affected.
So, Bread and Circuses it is then. Except this time it’s without the bread.
May I suggest that you are doing here what LINO does. You are listing proposals, not action that has actually happened. What has been done, as opposed to proposed, to care for those in need? I cannot see anything.
You’re right Cyndy. These proposed changes aren’t yet implemented. Apologies. I was trying to make the point that they won’t amount to much, and the improvements will be offset by negative impacts, as and when they are introduced.
Thanks
How will employment/skills support programmes succeed? They may indeed get some people in to work. But with 5% unemployment (probably an underestimate), this only means others will be out of work. It’s a zero sum game. As someone said (sorry, can’t remember the author) employment skills support is like training people to sit down quickly in a game of musical chairs (with far too few chairs). Net result, just as many unemployed. This is the “labour market slack”, as described by the Bank of England.
What’s needed are policies to reduce unemployment not to shuffle it about.
So not really a positive for labour.
I agree: if the BoE demands these training programmes are just gestures.
We need a government committed to full employment.
What about the millions who are too sick to work and are on the NHS waiting list?
I can see large numbers of Labour backbenchers voting against the budget if Reeves decides to dump the tax burden on modest earners in income taxes instead of on the wealthy.
Or at least I hope they do!
My fear is that, before any of us can organise effective resistance, the NHS will be sacrificed to PFI and lost forever. The scale of PFI that Streeting has in mind will not, I think, be reversible, even if by some miracle a functioning Your Party were soon to spring into life with a mission to reinstate the public sector.